1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to computer security in general, and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for providing security management in computer systems. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for providing centralized user authorization to allow secure sign-on to a computer system.
2. Description of Related Art
Within a corporation, some computer systems are likely to have sensitive information stored on their hard drives. It is necessary to prevent such sensitive information from being accessed by people that are not authorized to access such sensitive information.
Conventional methods for preventing sensitive information from being accessed by unauthorized individuals include data encryption, password protection, etc. However, a computer user's access privilege to a computer system within an organization may change from time to time. For example, an employee's computer access privileges can be changed due to changing job responsibilities. Most, if not all, of the conventional methods do not allow a network administrator to change a computer user's computer access privileges to one or more computer systems in a convenient manner.
Consequently, it would be desirable to provide an improved method and apparatus for providing centralized user authentication to allow secure sign-on to a computer system.